That was the way it happened that we had two nights at Enkhuisen; but the second we spent on "Lorelei-Mascotte" and "Waterspin," sleeping on the boats for the first time, and it was great fun. The next morning early, we had a picnic breakfast on board, making coffee with the grand apparatus in Mr. Starr's wonderful tea-basket, which he had bought at the most expensive shop in London, like the extravagant young man he is. We didn't wait to finish before we were off; and then came the trip to Stavoren, which Jonkheer Brederode would not have let us make on the boat, if the weather had not been calm, for once more we had to steer straight across the Zuider Zee for several hours.

When we had arrived it was hard to realize that Stavoren had once been a place of vast importance, and that a powerful king had lived there in old, old days, for the bastion seemed the only thing of importance in the poor little town now. But no doubt the great sand-bank, with its famous legend of the Proud Lady, is enough to account for the decline.

Nell smiled in a naughty, mischievous way, when her cousin remarked that his mother's family came originally from Friesland, I suppose because Jonkheer Brederode had just told us that the Frisian people are the most obstinate and persistent in the Netherlands: that all the obstinacy in any other whole province would not be as much as is contained in one Frisian man—or woman. But I think they have reason to be proud of themselves, especially as their obstinacy has kept their ancient customs and language almost intact, and the Spaniards never could make the least impression upon them by the most original and terrific kinds of tortures, invented especially to subdue Frisians. If they were buried alive, they just went on smiling, and saying, "I will," or "I won't," until their mouths were covered up.

I almost wished that Jonkheer Brederode hadn't said, before Mr. van Buren, that a "Frisian head" is an expression used by the Dutch when they mean incredible hardness or obstinacy; but he didn't mind at all, and immediately told us a thing that happened to his mother and some Frisian cousins of hers when they were girls. A musical genius, a young man, was visiting at their house, and when he had played a great deal for them at their request, he made a bet that they would tire of hearing his music before he tired of making it. They took the bet, and he began to play again; but he was not Frisian, and had never been in Friesland before, therefore he was not prepared for what would happen. Still, he was Dutch, so he did not like giving up, and he went on playing for twenty-four hours, without stopping for more than five minutes at a time. The ladies always exclaimed: "Please go on if you can; we're not tired at all," though they looked very pale and ill; so he didn't stop until he tumbled off his music-stool, and had to be carried away to bed, where he lay for two days. But the Frisian girls suffered no bad consequences, and said, if he had not given up, they would have sat listening for at least a week.

Once Jonkheer Brederode had a big yacht which he lent to the Belgian king for a trip, and there was a Frisian skipper. Every morning the decks were washed at five o'clock, and the king sent word that he would be glad to have it done later in the day, as it waked him up, and he could not go to sleep again. Then the Frisian answered, "Very sorry, King, but we always do wash the decks at five, and it must be done"; which amused his majesty so much that he made no more objections.

If the people of Friesland have great individuality, so have their meers. There was a canal through which we had to pass after Stavoren, like a long, green-walled corridor leading into a huge room. The green wall was made of tall reeds, and we had glimpses of level golden spaces, and sails which seemed to be skimming through meadows. There was a crying of gulls, a smell of salt and of peat, which once formed the great forests swallowed up by the meer. Then, through a kind of water-gateway, we slipped into our first Frisian meer, where the water was like glass, the black sails of yellow sail-boats were purple in the sunlight, and the windmills on the distant shore looked like restless, gesticulating ghosts.

Our wash raised a golden, pearl-fringed wave, but the water was so clear that now and then we fancied we could faintly see the old road under the meer, which they say Frisian farmers use to this day, knowing just where and how to guide their horses along it, through the water.

Because of this road, and others like it, Jonkheer Brederode had taken on a pilot at Stavoren, a man able to keep us off all hidden perils. He seemed to know every person on every heavily-laden peat-boat, or brightly painted eel-boat, and Nell insisted that even the families of wild ducks we met nodded to him as we went by.

We passed from the meer called Morra into the biggest in all Friesland, Fluessen Meer; and it was all rather like the Norfolk Broads, where my father once took me when I was a child. Always going from one meer into another, there were charming canals, decorated with pretty little houses in gardens of roses and hollyhocks, and emphasized, somehow, by strange windmills exactly like large, wise gray owls, or, in the distance, resembling monks bearing aloft tall crosses.

It was exquisite to glide on and on between two worlds; the world of realities, the world of reflections. Villages were far separated one from another, on canal and meer, though there were many farmhouses, walled round by great trees to keep cool the store-lofts in their steeply-sloping roofs. Gulls sat about like domestic fowls, and perched on the backs of cows, that grazed in meadows fringed with pink and purple flowers.

Men and girls rowed home from milking, and hung their green and scarlet milk-pails in rows on the outer walls of their farmhouse homes. Fishing-nets were looped from pole to pole by the water-side, in such curious fashion as to look like vineyards of trailing brown vines; and as we drew near to Sneek, where we planned to stay the night, we began to meet quaint lighters, with much picturesque family life going on, on board; children playing with queer, homemade toys; ancient, white-capped dames knitting; girls flirting with young men on passing peat-boats—men in scarlet jerseys which, repeated in the smooth water, looked like running fire under glass.

The old seventeenth-century water-gate at Sneek was so beautiful, that we expected to like the place with the ugly name; but after all we hated it, and decided to spend another night in our own floating houses.

All sorts of funny, water-noises waked me early; but then, I hadn't slept very soundly, because I couldn't help thinking a good deal about Mr. van Buren, who found a telegram waiting for him at Sneek, and went away from us by the first train he could catch. I don't know what was in the telegram, but he looked rather miserable as he read it, and I wondered a good deal in the night if his mother had called him back because Freule Menela van der Windt was not pleased at having him stay so long with us.

Nell thought our next day's run, going through the River Boorn to the Sneeker Meer, past Grouw and on to Leeuwarden, even more delightful than the day before; but it didn't seem as interesting to me, somehow. Perhaps it was having a person who was partly Frisian standing by me all the time, and telling me things, which made the difference; anyway, I had a homesick feeling, as if something were lacking. Mr. Starr said it would be nice to spend a honeymoon on board one of the nice little wherries we saw in the big meer; but I thought of Mr. van Buren and Freule Menela having theirs on one, and it gave me quite a sinking of the heart. I tried not to show that I was sad, but I'm afraid Mr. Starr guessed, for in the afternoon he gave me a water-color sketch he had made in the morning, on deck. He called it a "rough, impressionist thing," but it is really exquisite; the water pale lilac, with silver frills of foam, just as it looked in the light when he sat painting; fields of cloth-of-gold, starred with wild flowers in the foreground; far-off trees in soft gray and violet, with a gleam of rose here and there, which means a house-roof half hidden, in the middle distance. Lady MacNairne admired the sketch particularly; and I got the idea—I hardly know why—that she was not quite pleased to have it given to me instead of to her.